The front page
In Old GRA, a dining room that cooks Nigeria region by region, from the creek soups of Rivers to the suya grills of the North, with the stories that come with every pot.
Calabash began as a Sunday lunch. Chef Ibinabo Georgewill would cook for friends in her mother's compound in D-Line, one region at a time: a Kalabari native soup one week, a Benin black soup the next, then afang from Calabar. The friends kept bringing friends.
By 2019 the lunch had outgrown the compound. We found a colonial bungalow on Forces Avenue with a deep veranda and a mango tree, kept the cement floors and the high ceilings, and built a kitchen with firewood, charcoal and gas side by side.
Today the menu is organised the way the country is: by region. Every dish has a story, a market and a family behind it, and our servers will tell you all three if you ask. Read the regional pages below, or the full story on page 8.
The regional pages
Six regions, a page each
The regional index
Tap a region on the map, or choose from the index, to read its page.
A diagram of the regions, not to scale.
The bill of fare, in brief
Example prices
Small plates
Charcoal roasted plantain, grilled croaker, hot pepper sauce and sliced onion.
Cow foot in spiced palm oil paste with utazi, served in a wooden bowl.
Shredded cassava, ugba, garden egg leaves and fried fish.
Soups and swallows
Periwinkle, clams, prawns and catfish with uziza. With fufu or pounded yam.
Fresh fish, prawns and periwinkle in a light pepper broth. With boiled yam or fufu.
Palm fruit soup with dried fish and beletete. With Urhobo starch.
Rice, grills and feasts
Cocoyam and plantain wrapped in leaves, slow cooked with periwinkle. Saturdays only.
Local unpolished rice with green pepper sauce and assorted meat.
Smoky firewood jollof, grilled chicken and fried plantain.
Sweet and cool
Hibiscus with ginger and pineapple, chilled. No alcohol.
Tiger nut and date drink, made fresh each morning.
Warm puff puff with honey and toasted coconut.
A soup is a family's memory in a pot. My job is to cook it the way they remember it.Ibinabo Georgewill, chef and founder
Every soup on our menu is tested with someone from that region before it goes on. If an Efik grandmother says the edikang is not right, it does not go on.
By the numbers
Example figures for this demo.
From the journal
Page 7
Street food
The bole stand that taught our chef to cook
Before culinary school, there was a charcoal drum on Aba Road and a woman who never measured anything.
Page 7 · 6 minute read
Market day
Before 7am at Mile One: how we buy for the kitchen
Periwinkle by the bucket, fish by the eye and plantain by the bunch. A morning with our buyer.
Page 7 · 7 minute read
Feasts
The Long Room is open for your family's next big day
Naming ceremonies, introductions, birthdays and office end of year: plan the table and see the cost.
Page 5 · Plan a feast
Letters to the editor
Example reviews
Sir, I brought my mother from Owerri for her birthday and she ordered the ofe nsala. She asked for the cook to come out so she could ask who taught her. That is the highest praise in our family.
Sir, the bole and fish took me straight back to Aba Road in 1998. The pepper sauce was correct. I have now brought three colleagues and they all went for seconds.
Sir, a word for the staff, who explained every soup to my Lagos friends without once making them feel foolish for asking. We will be back for the Saturday ekpang.
Reservations
Book the veranda for sunset
Tables for two to ten online. For larger groups, the Long Room. We hold tables for 20 minutes; Port Harcourt traffic is understood.
Book a tableTakeaway
Soups by the litre
Order soups and swallows by the litre on WhatsApp before 3pm, for pickup after 5pm. Pay by transfer or POS at the gate.
WhatsApp an order
Soups are served in clay pots and calabash bowls.